Payless Pulls Light-Up Shoes After Family Says Toddler's Caught Fire

One minute they were flickering little lights, the next they were burnt to a crisp.

Payless ShoeSource says it's pulling a pair of light-up children’s sneakers from the store's shelves after a family says a pair belonging to their 2-year-old mysteriously caught fire.

“I’m just glad that my son wasn’t wearing it at the time,” Jovan Virag of Houston told KHOU of the colorful sneakers.

Virag said her son left his “Jake and the Neverland Pirates”-themed shoes in the family’s SUV on Friday. When they returned on Saturday morning, they opened the door to the smell of burning plastic.

“There just wasn’t anything in there to start a fire,” Virag said. “Only shoes and clothes.”

The Harris County Fire Marshal's Office in a statement Monday said the child's family reported the fire to them around 10:30 a.m.

“The cause of the fire is still under investigation,” said Captain Dean Hensley. “We will provide more information when it is available.”

For the time being, Virag said, she and her husband suspect the sneakers’ tiny lithium battery is to blame.

"I saw the shoe on the ground with the wires sticking up and it was a lightbulb, I knew immediately that's what it was," Virag told KPRC.

In a statement, the shoe chain said it is investigating the fire’s cause and pulling the Jake Lighted Runner shoes from their shelves “until we can thoroughly investigate a customer claim regarding that shoe."

“We are continuing to work with the family and local authorities in Houston to better understand the circumstances of the car fire and what may have caused it,” the company stated in an email to The Huffington Post Wednesday.